On 29 June 2007, the first iPhone went on sale at Apple stores and selected AT&T outlets in the United States at 6 p.m. At Apple's Stockton Street store in San Francisco, about 400 people were waiting an hour before opening, in a line extending two and a half blocks. The Fifth Avenue queue in New York ran for roughly a quarter-mile.
The same device produced very different lines by location. Arlington, Virginia, had more than one hundred people, while an Oregon mall counted about fifty at Apple and only five at a nearby AT&T store. The branded shop, not merely the retail network, had become the stage for the launch.
Customers were waiting for more than a telephone. They were taking a numbered place to test, on its first day, the promise that a music player, phone and internet device could become one object. A nationwide 6 p.m. opening turned a product release into a street event in city after city.